The life science industry is now witnessing the second decade of Biologic Revolution. The adoption and up gradation of technology is increasing rapidly. Conventional practices are being replaced by advanced technologies. The perception of pathological laboratories needs to be improved as the consumer expectations and government regulations towards improved patient safety, accurate diagnosis, Electronic Medical Records (EMR) as well as personalized medicines are growing. Pathology plays a significant role in patient care. Digital pathology serves this purpose by providing a facility for digital transformation of pathology and laboratory medicine.

Digital pathology is currently gaining momentum as pathologists are seeking to achieve workflow efficiency and cost cutting in the pathological process. It provides ready access to premium quality slide images, enabling better and fast diagnosis, as well as preservation of these digital slides for future reference. The digital pathology market is driven by the factors such as reduction in laboratory expenses, improvement in operational efficiency, and treatment decisions and patient care. The rising prevalence of cancer, increasing trends in drug development, companion diagnostics, and ease of consultation are the major drivers that are slated to propel this market. However, a few pivotal factors restraining the growth of this market are FDA regulations in some regions, high cost of Digital Pathology Systems (DPS), technological problems, and conservative outlook of pathologists. There are a few well-established firms and several small ones operating in this industry. The major players in the market are Aperio Technologies, Inc. (U.S.), Ventana Medical Systems (U.S.), Leica Microsystems GmbH (Germany), Digipath (U.S.), and Hamamatsu Photonics (Japan).

The global digital pathology market is broadly segmented into two categories based on its products and application. The product category includes scanners, analytics (visualization software, information management systems and image analysis platforms), storage and communication (sharing services, software), while the application category comprises human pathology and animal pathology. Both these markets are dominated by North America in 2012, followed by Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (RoW). The global digital pathology market is estimated to be $191.00 million in 2012, and is poised to grow at a CAGR of 12% to reach $336.61 million by 2017.